Lecture 3: Paradigms and Contemporary Issues

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Lecture 3 Paradigms and Contemporary Issues
How the Disciplines Future can Explain its Past
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INTRODUCTION A. Issues and Goals

• Contemporary psychology is ambiguous
• It is diverse, with old tensions and new currents
  
• Diversity Psychology is broad tent of theories
  and approaches.
• Psychologists in many WSU departments other than
  Psychology.
• Old Tensions The old tensions between scientific
  psychologists and those who are nonscientific or
  applied remains.
• History of Clinical Psychology very revealing!
• New Currents New movements extend ideas but
  increase diversity and tension in the field.

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INTRODUCTION B. Connecting Psychology Past to
its Present

• The contemporary picture looks nothing like it
  should!
• Ideally, contemporary psychology should be the
  progressive result of disciplines history.
• Progressive means a philosophically rational
  process of conceptual change
• Newer paradigms resolve anomalies of older ones.
• A general progressive account of the history of
  psychology has not been accepted.
• There are progressive accounts of local changes,
  which ironically may come from applied psychology
  (mental testing, diagnostic techniques, treatment
  outcomes) whose scientific status has been
  questioned.

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INTRODUCTION B. Connecting Psychology Past to
its Present

• One account holds that there is a progressive
  sequence between three forces in psychology.
• Psychoanalysis (First Force) 1890 -1930s
• We all succumb to the will of an all powerful
  unconscious
• Behaviorism (Second Force) 1930s -1960s
• Humans are like all other animals in being pawns
  of the environment
• Humanism (Third Force) 1960s -
• Humans are naturally good and naturally strive to
  be the best.

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INTRODUCTION B. Connecting Psychology Past to
its Present

• Another account holds a progressive relation
  between three paradigms.
• Mentalism 1879
• Psychology born as a science of consciousness
  using introspection (Wundt, Titchener)
• Behaviorism 1913
• Rejected the science of mental life in favor of a
  science of behavior (Watson, Pavlov)
• Cogntivism 1956
• Science of behavior for a computational
  (information-processing) science of mind
  (Lashley, Chomsky, Simon, Miller)

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INTRODUCTION C. Problems with Conceptual
Revolutions

• Leahey (1992) was skeptical that either sequence
  reflects a conceptual revolution.
• The Behaviorist ascension in the early 1920s was
  not a fight against (or replacement of) another
  paradigm
• Multiple paradigms existed and flourished early
  in the 20th Century.
• Mentalism (conscious mind)
• Functionalism (purposive actions)
• Psychoanalysis (unconscious influences).
• A methodological not ontological debate.

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INTRODUCTION C. Problems with Conceptual
Revolutions

• Even the changes in the 1960s may not reflect a
  paradigm shift.
• To Leahey, cognitisms ascension represented
  mentalisms marriage with behavioral issues.
• Cogntivism did not replaced behaviorism but
  represents continued basic work of mediated S R
  models
• Also, old mentalism on such issues of sensation,
  perception, and attention was augmented with new
  work on language, reasoning, and decision-making.
  
• Humanistic psychology did not replace behaviorism
  but offered other treatment options than behavior
  modification.

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INTRODUCTION C. Problems with Conceptual
Revolutions

• Koch (1982) was skeptical of the validity of any
  progressive model to account of psychologys
  history.

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INTRODUCTION C. Problems with Conceptual
Revolutions

• He argued that any ordering of the history of
  psychology was morally bankrupt.

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INTRODUCTION D. The Present in an Historical
Perspective

• a broad progressive account connecting
  psychologys past to its present is premature.
• What gets written about psychologys past depends
  on whether or not the diversity, tensions, and
  new currents are ever reconciled.
• The greater diversity and tensions introduced by
  new currents may force unification or more
  disunity.
• We will consider whether psychology is on a
  pathway towards unification or disunity.
• The account of psychologys history may depend on
  how the future resolves.

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II. DIVERSITY OF PSYCHOLOGY A. State of the APA

• American Psychological Association (APA) is the
  national organization of psychology.
• Founded in 1892 with a handful of charter
  members.
• Today there are 85,000 members who can be
  registered in 54 divisions representing diverse
  areas of interests and specialties.
• The history and present state of the APA reveals
  much about the discipline.
• No hostility among the different schools of
  thought in APA, reflecting a spirit of eclecticism

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II. DIVERSTY IN PSYCHOLOGY B. Tensions

• The diversity of psychology also creates tensions
  which include
• Science versus Application in psychology
• The focus on science vs. practice may be
  naturally irreconcilable in psychology due to
  personality and conceptual issues
• History of Clinical Psychology in the APA
• There has been a long tension between applied and
  scientifically oriented psychologists in the APA.
• The Training of Clinicians
• The APA standard of scientist-practitioner
  training (Ph.D.) is being challenged by Psy.D.
  degrees.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY A. Science vs.
Application

• The goals of science vs. application are
  antagonistic
• Applied psychologists focus on practicing
  psychology in order to heal or help people.
• Scientists are focused on testing ideas in order
  to prove them right or wrong.
• But in medicine, medical doctors who treat people
  are also biomedical scientists.
• But medical doctors and biomedical scientists may
  each accept the disease or medical model which is
  not universally shared in psychology.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY B. Science vs.
Application

• The tensions between practitioners and sciences
  are old!
• From its inception, there was always a tension
  those wanting psychology to be a pure science
  (Wundt, Titchener) and those wanting
  psychological applied to practical matters (such
  as Hall, Cattell, and Münsterberg).
• The founding of the APA did not decrease this
  tension.
• Titchener refused to participate in any of APAs
  activities.
• He created his own organization, The
  Experimentalists

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY C. Practitioners
vs. Scientists

• Temperament differences between practitioners and
  scientific psychologists.
• James (1907) divided philosophers into
• Tender-minded (Principled, Intellectualistic,
  Idealistic, Optimistic, Religious, Free-will,
  Dogmatic) temperament
• characterizes members of the humanities (Snow,
  1984)
• Tough-minded (Fact-based, Sensationalistic,
  Materialistic, Pessimistic, Irreligious,
  Fatalistic,Skeptical) temperament
• characterizes scientists (Snow, 1984)
• Because of the differences, communication between
  the two groups is challenging.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY C. Practitioners
vs. Scientists

• Other differences between practitioners and
  scientists in psychology.
• Kimble (1984) found that experimental
  psychologists tend to be tough-minded and
  humanistic psychologists and psychotherapists
  tend to be tender-minded.
• Dawes, Faust, Meehl (1989) identified different
  ways clinicians and scientists make judgments and
  decisions.
• Consider how you would prefer to be evaluated for
  a grade in the course
• Subjective judgments of the professor.
• Objective evaluation of course performance
  (tests, etc.)

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY C. Practitioners
vs. Scientists

• Dawes et al., (1989) characterized the difference
  in terms of the methods each prefers to make
  judgments and decisions.
• Clinical judgments are performed in ones head
  often using intuitive knowledge, clinical
  impressions, or subjective reactions
• Actuarial or Statistical judgments rest solely on
  empirical relations between data and the
  condition or event. No intuitions, impressions or
  reactions just using data to make judgments.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY C. Practitioners
vs. Scientists

• Differences found between the methods
• Goldberg (1972) found that clinical judgments
  were correct 62 whereas actuarial judgment were
  correct 70 of the time when making distinctions
  between psychosis vs. neurosis.
• Even training the clinicians in the actuarial
  rules did not improve their performance.
• Clinicians were unreliable in their patterns of
  judgments.
• Leli Filskov (1970) studied the diagnosis of
  brain dysfunction based on intellectual testing.
• The statistical judgments was correct 83 of new
  cases but clinicians were correct 63
  (experienced) and 58 (inexperienced) of the new
  cases,

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY C. Practitioners
vs. Scientists

• Why are clinical judgments worse than actuarial
  ones?
• Actuarial procedures, unlike clinical ones,
  always lead to the same conclusion for a given
  data set.
• Factors as fatigue, recent experience, or
  seemingly minor changes in the ordering of
  information or in the conceptualization of the
  case or task can produce fluctuations in
  judgment.
• Actuarial methods ensure that variables
  contribute to conclusions based on their actual
  predictive power and relation to the criterion of
  interest.
• Actuarial decision rules eliminate the
  non-predictive variables, and weight predictive
  ones in accordance with their independent
  contribution to accurate conclusions.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY C. Practitioners
vs. Scientists

• Why clinical are worse than actuarial judgments
• Clinicians often obtain little or no information
  about the accuracy of judgments.
• Clinicians often can not find out whether they
  are right and outcomes are easily distorted
  (Rosenhan, 1972)
• On this note, clinical judgments produce
  "self-fulfilling prophecies."
• Prediction of an outcome often leads to decisions
  that influence or bias that outcome (32).
• Clinicians are exposed to skewed samples making
  it difficult to determine relations among
  variables.
• Co-occurrence of certain features (EEG
  abnormalities) in a skewed sample (only juvenile
  delinquents) does not make the feature a
  predictive of that sample.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY C. Practitioners
vs. Scientists

• Clinicians are over-confident about their
  clinical judgment.
• Research shows that clinical judgments are made
  with more confident than their accuracy warrants
  (Dawes, 1998)
• Faust et al., (1988) found that most clinicians
  were quite confident in their diagnosis although
  not one was correct.
• An anti-actuarial claim is that group statistics
  dont apply to single individuals or events.
• Although individuals and events may exhibit
  unique features, they typically share common
  features with other persons or events that permit
  predictive power.
• By this logical, one would be willing to play
  Russian roulette with a gun having a single or
  multiple bullets.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY D. History of
Clinical Psychology

• In 18th C America, mental illness was seen as an
  acute illness, curable if therapy was early.
• The first mental asylum in the US was open in
  1750s in Philadelphia.
• Practiced moral therapy which involved
  individually tailored activities.
• By mid 1950s, asylums (now state hospitals) were
  disbanded as they had became warehouses of failed
  patient management.
• Research to promote therapy and diagnosis in
  asylums began in the late 1880s.
• Mental testing in asylums and out becomes
  popularized by J. M. Cattell R. Jastrow.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY D. History of
Clinical Psychology

• 20th C marks the beginning of clinical
  psychology.
• Clinical Psychology coined in 1907 by Witner who
  also edited journal Psychology Clinic.
• Mental testing, specifically intelligence
  testing, by psychologists becomes widespread
  during WWI.
• Freud and Jung visited Clark University in 1909
  and gave lectures about Psychoanalysis.
• MDs believed that psychotherapy should be
  practiced exclusively by doctors.
• Social movements brought attention to mental
  health issues (National Committee for Mental
  Hygiene).

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY D. History of
Clinical Psychology

• Clinical Psychology became a part of the American
  Psychology Association (APA) in 1919
• APA Founded in 1892 as a society to promote the
  science of psychology.
• Clinicians were not welcomed and later withdrew
  for a period of time, creating their own
  association
• It is not until 1944 that APA fully embraced
  clinical psychology, becoming responsible for
  clinicians credentialing and training
  requirements
• To reconcile with clinicians, APA changed its
  stated purpose to include psychology as a
  profession and a means of promoting human welfare.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY D. History of
Clinical Psychology

• APA addressed its new responsibility for
  credentialing and training clinical psychologists
• David Shakow chaired an APA committee to create
  the curriculum.
• The committee completed a report in 1947 which
  contained a set of undergraduate and graduate
  curriculum recommendations for clinical
  psychologists.
• The 1947 statement made clear that clinical
  psychology is both a science and an art calling
  for scientific rigor tempered by personal and
  social sensitivity.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY D. History of
Clinical Psychology

• But university Psych Depts. were reluctant of
  have APA control their curricula.
• Harvard, Columbia, and others still have Clinical
  Programs in their School of Education (Ed.D vs.
  Ph.D.)
• A 1949 meeting was held in Boulder Colorado to
  implement the new curriculum.
• Shakow and 73 others representing universities
  and other disciplines hammered out a set of
  specific proposals for the training and practice
  of clinical psychology.
• The resulting view of psychological practice was
  the Boulder (or Scientist-Practitioner) Model.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY D. History of
Clinical Psychology

• The agreed upon Boulder Model was designed to
  insure that clinical psychologists
• use scientific methodology in their practice
• work with clients using scientifically valid
  methods, tools, and techniques
• inform their clients of scientifically-based
  findings and approaches to their problems
• conduct practice-based research.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY D. History of
Clinical Psychology

• There remains a split between psychologists
  oriented to clinical vs. scientific aspects of
  the discipline in the APA.

APA continued to evolve into an
organization in which the applied members began
to outnumber the research-oriented psychologists.
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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY D. History of
Clinical Psychology

• In the past, it was the clinicians in APA who
  were unhappy, now it is the scientists.
• In the 1960s, a group of scientific psychologists
  left the APA and formed their own organization
• The Psychonomic Society
• In 1989 another group of psychological scientists
  organized the APS (American Psychological
  Society)
• APS is now called the Association for
  Psychological Science.
• This tension between practitioners and scientists
  is no better today as it was 120 years ago!

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY E. The Ph.D. vs.
Psy.D Degrees

• Clinicians have pushed back!
• Clinicians have some not-so-kind thoughts about
  the value of the scientific training in the
  Boulder Model.
• These clinicians argue that same person should
  not be trained in applied pure work.
• There is no valid reason for clinicians to train
  in pure science.
• They do little science once becoming clinicians
• Talent and interest in applied work is
  incompatible with talent and interest in
  scientific work.
• The scientist-practitioner model does not produce
  many scientist-practitioners.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY E. The Ph.D. vs.
Psy.D Degrees

• The scientist-practitioner model may be the
  problem!
• There is no evidence that handful of research
  courses in graduate school are sufficient to
  develop competent scientists.
• Clinical- and science-oriented professors in
  Boulder Model schools do not value clinically
  oriented research (the topic of interest to
  clinical students).
• The scientists think that the research lacks
  sufficient controls .
• The clinicians think that controls that are
  exerted makes the research invalid.
• Not many scientist-practitioners in the
  profession.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY E. The Ph.D. vs.
Psy.D Degrees

• Clinicians do not dismiss science!
• Everyone agrees that clinical psychology need a
  solid background in the basic science.
• Such background is trained in undergraduate and
  graduate psychology courses (Methods and
  Statistics)
• However, the question is whether clinicians
  should conduct their own research as required by
  the schools employing the Boulder Model.
• They distinguish between those who want to find
  generalities about all people (scientists) and
  those who want to help a person (humanist).

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY E. The Ph.D. vs.
Psy.D Degrees

• Some conclude that political forces (not sound
  reasons) was the cause of adding a research
  requirement to the Boulder Model.
• An alternative to the Boulder model was first
  instituted at the University of Illinois in 1968
• Instead of a science-practitioner model, the
  alternative was a scholar-practitioner model
• The model proposed training psychologists without
  the research requirement.
• The tents of the new model were ratified at a
  meeting in Vail Colorado in 1973,
• The Vail Model promoted a professional program
  like other disciplines.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY E. The Ph.D. vs.
Psy.D Degrees

• Several features differentiate the Vail from
  Boulder models
• Training is more strongly focused on clinical
  practice that either of the other two.
• The programs usually grant a Psy.D. degree rather
  than a Ph.D. or Ed.D.
• Admissions criteria may place more of an emphasis
  on personal qualities and clinically-related work
  experience.
• These programs are housed in a greater variety of
  institutional settings than are research
  scientist or scientist-practitioner programs.

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III. OLD TENSIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY E. The Ph.D. vs.
Psy.D Degrees.

• The students interested in psychology is left to
  decide between two types of programs.
• The different programs designate the scientist
  role (Ph.D.) from the practitioner role (Psy.D.).
  
• Acceptance rate for students are higher in Psy.D.
  (40) than Ph.D. (13) programs.
• Psy.D. offers less financial assistance than
  Ph.D. programs and students graduate with more
  debt.
• Students in Ph.D. programs graduate later than
  students in Psy.D. programs.
• PsyD graduates do not perform as well as PhD
  graduates on the Examination for Professional
  Practice in Psychology (EPPP).

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IV. NEW CURRENTS IN PSYCHOLOGY A. Sources of
New Ideas

• New ideas come into psychology a variety of
  places which include
• Technological innovations
• These technologies provide measurement accuracy
  and even metaphoric applications.
• New funding priorities
• New research open new investigations and
  theories.
• New intellectual traditions
• These can be from outside or inside psychology
• There has been some of each in the last couple of
  years in psychology

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IV. NEW CURRENTS IN PSYCHOLOGY B. Technological
Innovations

• Technological changes include computer
  technologies and biomedical equipment.
• Supercomputing alternative to the serial computer
• Parallel Distributive Processing models of
  cognition and reasoning became popular in the
  1990s, which provide analogues of neural networks
  (Dual Process Theory).
• Brain scanning and gene sequencing technologies
  provided new ways of examining biological basis
  of behavior.
• MRI and FMRI allow real time brain scanning of
  various activities to better understand mind body
  relations.
• Gene sequencing allows for better understanding
  heritability.

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IV. NEW CURRENTS IN PSYCHOLOGY C. Funding
Changes

• New funding focus on Positive Psychology
• Positive Psychology is the scientific study of
  the strengths and virtues that enable individuals
  and communities to thrive.
• Research on happiness and other positive
  emotions, resilience, living the good and
  meaningful life.
• It began in1998 when Martin Seligman, the father
  of the modern positive psychology movement, chose
  it as the theme for his term as APA president and
  found financial support to promote research.
• Extension of the Humanistic and Phenomenological
  perspective in psychology.

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IV. NEW CURRENTS IN PSYCHOLOGY D. Intellectual
Currents

• Postmodernism is a movement from the Social
  Sciences and Humanities
• Postmodernism, or social constructionism, holds
  that reality is created by individuals and
  groups within various personal, historical and
  cultural contexts.
• truth is always relative to cultural, group,
  and personal perspectives.
• The socio-cultural contextual view in psychology
  is largely based on postmodernism.

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V. FUTURES OF PSYCHOLOGY A. Issues

• How the diversity, tensions, and current trends
  of contemporary psychology are addressed will be
  a basis to define the past.
• One the one hand, with greater diversity and
  tension, there is more of a opportunity to unify
  psychology.
• Phenomenon-based inquiry will allow for the unity
  of multiple perspectives (Sternberg Grigorenko,
  2001)
• Biopsychosocial models have address complex
  interactions between multiple incompatible
  variables.
• Psychological theories adopt different design
  stances so collectively they view human beings as
  multipurpose.

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V. FUTURES OF PSYCHOLOGY A. Issues

• But the future may hold greater disunity
• Some disunity trends accelerating Separated
  psychology departments.
• Most would agree that psychology is still a
  fragmented collection of different facts,
  theories, assumptions, methodologies, and goals.
• James assessment in 1885 holds true today. This
  is not a science, only a hope for a science.
• But now, not all psychologists adopt a
  deterministic view of human beings, necessary for
  a unity-in-science view of the discipline.